


outlaws

by contraryrhythm



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: FitzSimmons Secret Santa, Oneshot, Western AU, with a steampunk twist
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-28
Updated: 2016-12-28
Packaged: 2018-09-12 20:27:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9089497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/contraryrhythm/pseuds/contraryrhythm
Summary: A bumbling bounty hunter runs into some outlaws and makes an unexpected decision.Written for Fitzsimmons Secret Santa 2016!





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AGL03](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AGL03/gifts).



> Written for agl03 on Tumblr, who requested a Wild West AU, for Fitzsimmons Secret Santa. I hope I did your request justice. :D Happy holidays!

Leo Fitz is sitting in the saloon, nursing a beer and studying the tattered poster in his hands. He’d ripped it off one of the lampposts in the town square. _Wanted Dead or Alive: Daisy “Quake” Johnson. Reward: $10,000._ A stamp of a skull with tentacles at the bottom indicates its author, though Fitz never really pays much attention to that as long as he knows he’ll get paid. There’s a smudgy sketch of the woman’s face in the center of the paper: she’s surprisingly young, and pretty, as outlaws go.

She’s also deadly and incredibly evasive. The great white whale for bounty hunters like himself. She’s been on the run for two years by now, and she’s never come close to being captured.

Ordinarily, this target would be far out of feasible range—Fitz is a mediocre hunter at best. But Fitz is feeling confident today, a courage born mostly of desperation, since he hasn’t collected anything in several weeks and his pockets are dismayingly light. He doesn’t even have the money to do proper maintenance on his walker. It kills his engineer heart to have the poor thing stumbling along with barely-functional steering.

Thinking of it, he glances out the window at it. Its metal body gleams dully in the sun, incongruously parked in front of the dusty saloon. The windshield is grimy, and its legs are—Fitz freezes. There is a woman touching his walker, running her hand along one of its metal legs.

Fitz fumbles in his pocket and slams a few dollars next to his unfinished beer.

“Keep the change,” he tells the android behind the bar. It nods stiffly and beings to thank him for patronizing the saloon, but he’s already rushing towards the swinging doors. He pushes through them and shouts in the direction of his walker.

“Oy! You! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

The woman standing at his walker starts and takes her hand off the metal, but doesn’t move any further. Fitz reaches his machine and immediately scans it for damage. There’s no noticeable changes, except that a screw on one of the leg plates looks suspiciously loose, almost as if someone had been attempting to remove it. He rounds on the woman immediately.

“Were you trying to ROB me?”

She scoffs, rolling her eyes. She’s dressed practically, all leather and pockets and a utility vest, with her belt loaded with what look like scientific tools. A cowboy hat shades her eyes, but doesn’t hide a cascade of auburn hair, lightly tied back from her face. Her eyes are keen and alert. 

Now that he looks at her, she’s actually quite beautiful. 

 _But that obviously doesn’t excuse the fact that she’s a thief!_ He scolds himself internally. And oh, now she’s talking. Lovely lips ( _shut UP, Fitz_ ).

“Rob you? Of this piece of junk? You do know that your front axle is smothered in rust, right? And your catalytic converter is absolutely hopeless.”

“ _Excuse_ me, miss,” Fitz says, forgetting her attractiveness in the midst of his indignation, “but I don’t see how the state of my walker is any of your business in the first place.” He glares at her. “And I knew that!” he huffs. “Obviously.”

Technically, he hadn’t known about the converter, but she doesn’t need to know that. 

She looks somewhat abashed, but she rallies. “Actually, it is my business. Because I am an…inspector. Yes, that’s right. A walker inspector.” She nods righteously.

Fitz looks at her skeptically. “A walker inspector? Never heard of it.”

“It’s a new thing,” she insists. “My job is to ensure that…that all walkers on the road are up to environmental and safety standards. Which yours is definitely not,” she informs him, holding her head high. 

“Okay, where’s your license?” he asks. “If you’re an inspector you surely have a license.”

She shifts uncomfortably, fiddling with her hat. “It’s, er, back in my walker.”

“Which is where?” he presses.

She gestures vaguely around the corner of the saloon, clearly reluctant to actually show him.

“All right then.” Ignoring her protests, he steps around her and strides around the corner. The woman’s walker is there, as promised. It’s superior in quality to his, though not much better in its cosmetic state. It looks like an Avenger model, a few years old but top of the line in its prime. He takes a moment to look it over, vaguely jealous. Beneath the grime and missing screws, it’s a beauty.

The woman catches up to him. “Yes very well, that’s it.” She sounds annoyed.

“Doesn’t look like you have any room to be criticizing me. The state of this vehicle is deplorable!” he tells her.

She bristles. “I’m working on repairs, all right? There hasn’t been much…time. Or money.”

“Oh, being a ‘walker inspector’ doesn’t pay well, does it?” he snipes. “Come off it.” Then something on the walker catches his eye. He takes a step closer. “Wait a minute.” He brushes some dirt off a gold plate on the body, uncovering a registration number.

“Don’t touch that!” she smacks his hand away. Her voice is high and sharp, almost panicked. If Fitz hadn’t already been suspicious, he would be now. He shoots her a glare, then returns to peering at the registration number. She shifts nervously behind him, wringing her hands.

“Funny, I’m pretty sure a walker by this description was stolen a few weeks back, miss. You’re going to need to come wi—”

“Sorry!”

Really, it was foolish of him to turn his back on her. Just as he wonders why she’s apologizing, something metallic hits the side of his head with impressive force. He’s out cold in an instant.

\-----

Fitz regains consciousness slowly, with an awful headache pounding in his skull. At first he’s disoriented, wondering where he is, but then the memory of that thieving and apparently violent woman shoots into his head. How dare she? Suddenly he realizes that he’s bound and gagged—propped sitting up against a wall, with duct tape over his mouth and rope encasing his wrists and ankles. He flexes his muscles experimentally, but the ropes are wound tight. _Kidnapped. Excellent. Some hunter I am._  

He decides to keep his eyes closed and process the situation. Two women are talking a foot or two away from him; he recognizes one as the woman from before. Attractive Violent Woman. 

“—I panicked, all right? He knew that it was a stolen walker!” Attractive Violent Woman sounds distressed.

“Panicked,” repeats her companion. “So your first instinct was to kidnap him? You couldn’t just knock him out and run?”

Attractive Violent Woman is abashed. “Look, I’m not good at this! I was doing just fine working in the lab before you got me involved in your…bad girl shenanigans.”

“Jemma, we’ve been in some sticky situations, but you’ve never kidnapped anyone before this. Are you sure you didn’t just get flustered because you liked him?” the other woman inquires. “Cute and nerdy-looking, he’s totally your type. And now you’re blushing.”

‘Jemma’ splutters. Her companion snickers. “What! No! Absolutely not!” 

“Mmm, okay, whatever you say. Anyway, I’m going to start her up and get us out of here before anyone notices he’s missing. You’d better talk to him and figure out what to do with him. I think he’s awake, he moved a minute ago.”

Fitz, busted, gives up the pretense of unconsciousness and opens his eyes. Then his eyes almost pop out of his head as he processes the scene before him. The tiny hold of a walker, Jemma and her companion standing above him.

Her companion, outlaw Daisy Johnson, leaning on the ladder that leads up to the cockpit. An impressive collection of guns hangs from her belt. Her features, even under her cowboy hat, are unmistakable. 

Eyes wide, he makes a sound of frustrated surprise and rage. Daisy “Quake” Johnson, outlaw extraordinaire. His ticket to fame and fortune, right in front of him, and he can’t do a thing about it.

Daisy smirks. “I see you know who I am. Pleased to make your acquaintance.” She tips her hat to him mockingly. She nods to Jemma. “I’m out, good luck.” She climbs up the ladder into the cockpit. A few seconds later, the walker’s engine rumbles to life around them, and the floor shifts as it moves.

Jemma and Fitz are left alone in the hold. Jemma twists her fingers together awkwardly under Fitz’s burning glare.

“Look, I really am sorry about this! But Daisy is my best friend, and we’ve really done nothing wrong, and I couldn’t have you getting us into trouble. I hope you understand,” she says. She waits a few moments. Then she exclaims, “Oh, silly me. You can’t answer.”

She crouches down next to Fitz and tentatively grips a corner of the duct tape on his mouth. He braces himself for a painful removal, but she pulls it away as gently as she possibly can. As soon as she does, Fitz stretches out his jaw and mouth and returns to glaring at her. To her credit, she maintains his gaze without backing down ( _she has pretty eyes)_. 

“You’re not just a thief, you’re an outlaw,” he accuses. “An accomplice to the most wanted criminal on this side of the world.”

“To be fair,” Jemma says, “we haven’t done anything wrong. Except, yes, a little stealing, but we needed to survive!”

“You also just kidnapped a bounty hunter,” Fitz interjects helpfully, but she ignores him.

“We’re innocent! Hydra is corrupt and evil, and they want Daisy dead because she’s trying to stop them.” 

“Hydra, evil?” Fitz scoffs. “They’re a giant corporation. So sure, they’re not angels, but ‘evil’ is taking it a bit far, don’t you think?”

Jemma pauses. She looks down, serious now. “If you only knew how many innocent people they’ve slaughtered. They’ve killed people I knew and loved. And as for the rest…well, I don’t even know if half of my friends are still alive.” Her eyes are tight with grief, and despite himself, Fitz finds himself wanting to make her smile again.

She shakes her head, bringing herself back to the present, and gives a small smile. “Anyway, I’m sorry I tried to steal bits off your walker. I wanted them for some repairs on ours.”

“I knew it!” Fitz said indignantly, so self-righteously that it makes her laugh. It’s a beautiful sound, and he can’t help but smile a little.

“Yes, all right, you did,” she concedes. She looks at him consideringly. “How did someone like you become a bounty hunter, of all things?”

So she _had_ been listening. He sighs. “It’s a long story. The short version is that I used to be a perfectly respectable engineer, and an inventor. Some ass stole my plans and used them for himself, and destroyed my career for good measure.” He shrugs as if it doesn’t matter. “I lost everything. So I learned to stop caring. About people, about art, about ideas…about everything except money, I suppose. I’ve been all right so far.” 

She stares at him, a sad look in her eyes. Something close to pity, but kinder. Empathy. He feels a twinge in his chest, and he can hardly stand to look back at her. This woman does something strange and inexplicable to him. 

“That’s awful,” she says quietly. “For what it’s worth, you deserve better.” He could drown in her gaze.

“You don’t even know me,” he says, but gently. A part of him is demanding why he’s having such a civil conversation with his kidnapper, but he shoves it back down. He can worry about escaping and apprehending Daisy later.

“I feel like I do,” she replies. Then she shakes her head and laughs. “I just realized I don’t even know your name yet. What is it?”

“Leo Fitz, but call me Fitz,” he tells her. “Everyone does.” A moment later, he wonders why he told her his real name. He wouldn’t usually, but it…felt right.

“Well hello, Fitz,” she says, smiling. “I’m Jemma.” 

Fitz instinctively tries to move his bound arm and grins ruefully. “I’d shake your hand, but…” He tilts his head expressively towards his wrists. Jemma starts to smile, but just then, the floor jerks violently to the right, and both of them fall sideways. They end up curled facing each other, and Jemma’s hand reaches out just in time to catch Fitz’s head before it slams into the floor.

“Thanks,” he gasps.

“Now we’re even from before,” she says breathlessly. Fitz doesn’t think this really makes up for knocking him out, especially since she’s the one who tied him up and rendered him incapable of breaking his own fall, but he lets it go for the moment, because now he hears the sound of gunfire coming from outside.

Sure enough, Daisy shouts from the cockpit a moment later. “It’s Hydra, Jemma! They’ve got a whole damn blockade up.”

Jemma gently rests Fitz’s head on the floor and scrambles to her feet, clambering up the ladder to poke her head into the cockpit. “What do we do?” she asks Daisy. “Can you go back the way we came?” 

“No can do,” Daisy calls back. “That’s back towards the center of town, they’ll just corner us.” The walker lurches again as she tries to avoid the worst of the gunfire. “There’s only about a dozen of them and two walkers, our best chance is to fight our way out!”

“If you say so!” Jemma calls back, sounding anxious but determined. She starts to climb fully into the cockpit, then pauses, and clambers back down. To Fitz’s surprise, she pulls a knife out of her belt and saws at his wrist and ankle ropes until they part, freeing him. He sits up and rubs his wrists to restore circulation, looking up at her in confusion.

“Why?” he asks.

“This isn’t your fight,” she says, and points to the hatch in the floor. “When we stop moving, you can drop out this way and run back towards town. They won’t care about following you, not when they have us. And here’s your gun.” She pulls his weapon out of her belt—must have taken it when he was unconscious—and tosses it to him. Fitz barely catches it.

He stands, a little unsteadily, and braces himself against the wall. “I don’t understand,” he says.

“You deserve better,” Jemma says, moving towards him. Quicker than he can process it, she takes his face in her hands and kisses him soundly on the lips. “Be more than this!” she whispers fiercely, and before he can recover from shock, she’s whirled around and climbed up the ladder without a backwards glance.

Fitz’s mind is reeling. He simply stands there a moment, bewildered, and touches his mouth. He can still feel the ghost of her lips on his. She’d kissed him. She’d trusted him not to turn on them. She...she...

A bullet makes a sizeable dent in the wall close to Fitz’s hand, and he jerks away, jolted back to the present. It’s now or never, and he doesn’t fancy being captured by Hydra’s gunmen, as much as he’d argued for their non-evilness before (he’s not so convinced anymore).

The walker has stopped moving, and he hears the top hatch in the cockpit opening, presumably for Daisy and Jemma to shoot out of it. He crouches by the bottom hatch and pulls it open. The ground is only about 8 feet away, a manageable drop. Luckily they seem to have stopped over a patch of desert grass instead of the hard dusty ground around it. He readies himself to jump, then stops.

Jemma’s face, so recently close to his, pops into his memory. Her earnest, beautiful eyes. “Be better.” Her laughter. The sadness he wants to banish from her face forever. Her kindness and intelligence. Her faith in him. 

He barely knows her, but he feels like he does. He wants to make that feeling a reality. And he wants her belief in him to be justified. 

Which means…

“Dammit,” he mutters to himself, but he closes the hatch and climbs up the ladder. He reaches a room about the same size as the one he just left. The cockpit controls are left unattended. As predicted, Daisy and Jemma are already standing at the top of the upper ladder, alternately firing out the upper hatch and ducking back inside.

Daisy sees him first, and nudges Jemma. “Your new boyfriend’s still here,” she shouts over the sound of artillery, then looses another round out of the hatch.

Jemma looks down. She’s blushing. She doesn’t say a word, but Fitz thinks it’s relief, and maybe even happiness, that’s lighting her eyes. Then a shot comes in low over the hatch, and both women instinctively duck. It comes too close to Jemma for comfort, and suddenly he’s annoyed. Damn Hydra. Ruining the moment.

He starts climbing the ladder, reaching the top quickly. Daisy and Jemma exchange glances but both move aside to make room for him in the middle. Without hesitation, Fitz pulls his gun out of his holster, adjusts a setting on the side, leans out of the top hatch, aims, and fires.

The bullet hits near the center of the cluster of Hydra. There is a pause.

Then the bullet explodes spectacularly in a blast of white-hot bluish light. All gunfire from the area ceases, and all that’s left are moans, shouts, and the creaking of a Hydra walker tilting sideways. It lands on its side with a crash.

Daisy is the first to recover the power of speech. “…Nice, dude. So, what kind of gun is that? I want one.”

Fitz doesn’t reply; he’s too busy looking at Jemma. Her lips are parted in shock, staring at the ruined blockade. Finally, she turns to him.

“Holy crap,” she says first.

He shrugs modestly. “I invented it, a long time ago. Explosive plasma blaster sort of thing. Glad it could help.”

There’s a ghost of a smile playing around her lips. “You stayed,” she says. 

“I decided that maybe I do deserve better, and that I have to work for it,” he says quietly. His eyes are locked on hers. “And I also wanted to argue some more about that catalytic converter.” Now they’re both grinning, a little bit goofily.

“That can be arranged,” she tells him cheerfully. “You’re one of us now.”

“Always wondered what it would like to be an outlaw,” he replies. “Guess now I’ve got the chance.” He can’t seem to stop staring at her and smiling.

“Oh, Fitz!” Unable to restrain herself any longer, Jemma throws her arms around his neck and hugs him. He’s caught off guard, but it only takes a moment for him to put his arms around her too and pull her just a little closer.

“Okayy, hi, I guess I’ll just go back downstairs then,” Daisy says pointedly. She grumbles to herself as she starts down. “Great, I’m a third wheel now. The greatest outlaw in the world is a third wheel. Love it. I knew he was her type…”

Neither Fitz nor Jemma wants to let go, but reluctantly, they pull back from each other. Not too far. Jemma’s arms stay around his neck. Fitz’s hands rest lightly on her waist.

“For the record,” Fitz says, “you’re a terrible liar. And there’s no such thing as a walker inspector.”

Jemma rolls her eyes. “All right, smarty pants, you’re the one who let yourself get knocked out and kidnapped by the people you were trying to capture.”

“You can kidnap me whenever you want,” Fitz says, unable to keep a straight face.

“I think I just did,” Jemma says. They smile irrepressibly at each other.

All things considered, Fitz has had a very surprising day. He didn’t catch Daisy Johnson—at least not in the way he intended—and he didn’t get his reward. But he’s starting to think that he’d take riding off into the sunset with Jemma over $10,000 any day.

And so he does.


End file.
